Unicode in PeopleTools 8: 5 million lines of code, 5 months, 5 people

PeopleSoft 8 will be the first major enterprise resource planning system to
implement Unicode in a generally-available release. This project was
primarily undertaken in PeopleTools, the underlying technology behind all
PeopleSoft Applications, and involved significant changes to well over 5
million lines of code yet was completed in less than 5 months. Unlike most
Unicode conversion projects involving development tools where not only the
underlying technology needs to be changed but also the higher-level
application definitions built using these tools, the goal of the project
was to move to Unicode with minimal disruption to the existing application
definitions and business rules built using the toolset. In addition, well
over 1000 application developers, both internal and external needed to be
able to continue to develop applications using the Unicode-enabled toolset
with no specific knowledge of Unicode or its workings.

Given the extensive breadth of the PeopleSoft applications suite, the move
to Unicode not only had to encompass changes to the core C and C++ code in
the toolset, but also had to cope with:

7 database management system backends

8 back-end operating system platforms, including IBM EBCDIC platforms

15 third-party integrated products

Unicode Executable support on Win95/Win98

This session will take a look at some of the techniques used in the project
to accomplish the Unicode integration while other major development work
was in progress, how operating system specific issues were solved, and how
the Unicode story was internally marketed to the applications development
organization and upper management. Additionally, it will take a look at
the architecture of the PeopleSoft 8 release, and how the Unicode standard
plays an important role in all processing and storage tiers of the system.

When the world wants to talk, it speaks Unicode

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